Tunlr.net lets you stream and watch US and UK shows from anywhere in the world

There’s been a fair amount of technology thrown at the problem of how to watch content on sites like Hulu.com from outside the US over the years (and vice versa re UK shows from the US). So far the solutions have tended to be VPN style, where you install some software, fire it up and then ‘tunnel’ your way into the North American continent like some digital mole. The advantage of these fixes are they’re quick and easy, the disadvantage is you’re going through a third party service and so the speed can suffer a lot. Think stutter-vision. Now there’s a new method.

The new service from Tunlr.net is not – despite the name – a tunnel as such, in that you don’t access the US content via an intermediary server, instead you are simply changing your DNS access to mimic the IP of an American visitor. What makes it special is the fact that you then access the content at full speed, with no stuttering or slowdown at all.

The downside is it’s more complicated to set up, because you need to dig deep into the bowels of your computer network settings to alter your browser DNS to their servers each time. And also you need to make sure you switch it off after you’ve watched the show, otherwise the service will deliberately penalise you speedwise for hogging their DNS bandwidth.

There is a solution for this however. Download two simple scripts you can find here, embed them on your Windows desktop, and you can run them to switch the DNS change on and off with a single click. Note that you need to run both files as administrator for it to work. Job done. We tested it and it worked fine, and since the DNS service runs both ways, it also works to let you access UK or European content from the US as well, which should please Dr Who fans and suchlike.

Strictly speaking this is not freeware, but we’re going to tag it as such because of the two batch files, and because the service offers the same kind of free access as the freeware alternatives.

Tunlr was good while it worked. But now with the speed restriction and no support for netflix, this is officially a failure ! Better stick to professional services such as unotelly which while not free, offers unlimited viewing over multiple devices.